


Resonance

by mad_and_moonly



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: F/M, can't remember anyone's last nam, haven't posted anything in literally years, i googled the last names and have summarily changed them in the tags, is it dubcon if the person just.. shows up idk, it is christmas break so i have time to actually think for once GODDANG, school is that sumbitch that keeps on giving i tell ya what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:03:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_and_moonly/pseuds/mad_and_moonly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Raleigh recover... ~together~. </p>
<p>Takes place immediately after the events of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resonance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffee-- the beverage that gave me the boldness and presentness of mind to post this](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=coffee--+the+beverage+that+gave+me+the+boldness+and+presentness+of+mind+to+post+this).



 

It's just past lunch hour and neither of them are supposed to be in this room for another month at least, and yet here they are-- sparring.

Their first drift made it difficult, and their second almost impossible to dissociate from one another-- to ignore the mental twitch that alerts Mako to each of Raleigh's jabs and the buzz in the base of Raleigh's skull that means Mako is going in for a leg sweep. But it's fun, in a way. The heightened anticipation makes each mock fight a dance-- too fluid to be deadly-- of two bodies joined forever in combat.

At least that's what Mako thinks before she's pinioned to the ground by the bulk of Raleigh's forearm.

"Three-three."

"Be careful." she hisses, sotto voce.

They're not supposed to be walking the compound much less kicking and punching at one another, and if he dislodged the shunt the medteam labored to shove into his side then he'd be under league surveillance for another twenty days. "Aren't I always?" Raleigh says and smirks above her-- sweat dripping from his nose and onto her collarbone. Mako rolls from beneath him-- back tacky with sweat of her own and, as an afterthought, delivers a sharp kick to the pressure point on the inside of his elbow.

"Gross." she murmurs-- half at the sweat and half at the fact that she'd seen everything that flashed through his mind when he had her pinned to the ground.

 

* * *

 

 The funerals were the hardest-- seven caskets all delivered to base-- two of them empty, more commemorative than functional-- and visiting families wept over the five that held bodies. The triplets' waterlogged corpses had been recovered and cleaned for a private viewing in Victoria City and The Kaidonovskys were flown to a wake in their honor at the Kremlin.

Stacker was gone. He was gone forever and Mako didn't even have his body to mourn. She didn't feel much at the time-- numb beneath the cold driving rain that the sky seemed to reserve for funerals-- and she'd tried in vain to break through to Herc, who stood over the empty casket that was his son's, fingers skimming over the flag that the co-op had draped over it and tugging sporadically at Max's leash when his whining got too loud. His shoulders tensed in his coat when she'd touched his back.

"The world is saved." he'd quavered, pulling at the leash until Mako stooped to pet Max who stopped whining only to slobber all over her gloves. Herc stood in the rain-- foregoing any umbrella and letting the water from above mix freely with his tears-- looking like he'd aged ten years in a week. "The world is saved. The rift is closed and my son is dead." Mako had pulled back from him then-- silently boarding the shuttle back to base and wondering how Raliegh, damn him, could live with himself-- missing their mentor's funeral when he'd given his life to make sure humanity saw another sunrise.

She felt so strange-- nothing bordering on sadness, absolutely nothing but rage at Raleigh's disrespect, his reluctance to take orders and his arrogance at skipping a mandatorily sanctioned goodbye for their friends-- her only family. She'd skipped a couple of stairs in her anger-- nearly flying up them to scream at him-- to demand an answer as to why he could flout orders at a time like this. Just when she'd begun to think that he cared.

She beat on his door until her knuckles fely raw, one of her gloves having disappeared on the shuttle, and when he didn't open it she yelled at the gray metal instead. "I can't believe you! I can't believe you would do this to Stacker and to Chuck and the triplets! How can you live with yourself when--"

The door swung open and it hit her like a switch flipping on-- sorrow, waves of it, pouring from the room and she was almost levelled to her knees-- throat thick with tears and eyes stung to streaming. And Raleigh stood above her with his eyes red rimmed and looking like hell in his standard issue sweats-- before backing into his room.

"Mako, I couldn't make it-- I... I can't go to any more funerals. First there was Yancy and now Stacker. I-- God, I'm so sorry." She couldn't breathe past the twisting in her throat much less speak, so she slumped into the floor while Raleigh explained-- that sadness could be so overwhelming that it was physical-- but she hadn't needed the explanation because she'd felt it. Grief latching to her like a virus that had burst from Raleigh's room the moment he'd thrown open his door. When she caught her breath she found herself clutching at the front of his sweatshirt, and he was leading the both of them into his small bunk and murmuring something about her sleeping here until the nightmares passed; and she knew then-- that the drift had unlocked something in the both of them, that her room was soundproofed and Raleigh shouldn't be able to hear her cry out in the night.

But he could hear her, and he felt as she felt-- he felt what she hadn't allowed herself to feel. And as she floated down into sleep with Raleigh opting to give up his bunk for the floor-- she realized that, much like the memories unearthed in the drift-- the feelings filter both ways.

* * *

So now when they spar, she's attentive. Mako's well aware that the Jaeger program has been decommissioned and that her services are no longer needed in any fighting capacity. Her rise to fame opened hundreds of doors-- she could be an educator or a politician-- the tactical heads of several militaries left automated voicemails requesting her services as an advisor on a weekly basis. But instead of joining any of them she's dragged herself here every Saturday in an attempt to replicate the drift-- working with the shreds of that enhanced connection to feel something that didn't stand up to definition.

Mako knows what he is thinking, but now she is attentive to what Raleigh feels instead.

"Ready for another round?" he asks, swabbing at his damp hair and raising little puffs of chalk dust with every barefooted step. She'd suggested a private gym she was familiar with near Shinjuku, but of course he insisted on someplace in the dankest corner of the Bronx-- where the mats were peeling and a skullcapped coach was dozing in the corner.

The place is no Shatterdome.

"Always." she says to her wrapped knuckles. And it's true, because with a mental one-two-three she's taken up her staff and is circling him-- dragging one end along the floor and leaving her shirt rucked up to her ribs. She needs the distraction if she's ever going to be able to find a-- there, his eyes drop for a moment and their stomachs twist in concert-- and she snaps the staff upward, just beneath his jaw-- a killing stroke had it been anything sharper-- and Raleigh slams his a staff to the ground with an indignant clatter and claps.

"You're a real bastard, you know that?" Mako leans her staff against the cords when Raleigh throws back his head and laughs.

"I am?" he says-- half question, half statement as he walks toward her-- his bare feet so much larger than her own.

"You are." she says, suddenly truly angry. "You move artlessly-- like a bear." She says, wishing his Japanese is on par with her English so she can lay into him as sharply as she wants to.

But she's restricted in this language-- to polite turns of phrase memorized for military balls and when she's angry to the animals listed in a picture book she hardly remembers-- a tiny book of animals all painted in watercolor that had been slipped into her pocket.

She can't recall the title, but she remembers most vividly the words spoken carefully to her during a train ride to a base in Dover. "This gray blobby thing is an elephant." The big man had said slowly-- the big man in the blue coat with row upon row of shining buttons. "And this brownish wodge is meant to be a bear."

Stacker had pawed at the air then, ignoring the other evacuees who gaped at the large man growling at the tiny girl in a sooty blue coat. "Don't cry, dear. You see? This is a lion-- the bravest of all the creatures. You and he are not unalike in that way-- or perhaps it's a she. Can't really tell with these bloody awful paintings now can we?" She'd laughed at that-- understanding more of the tone than the words-- absorbing any offered kindness like sun rays and memorizing the colored blobs and the words Stacker matched them with.

Elephant. Bear. Lion.

Raleigh frowns. "Is everything alright over there?" he says, lighthearted tone evaporating, with his eyes guarded and hard and ungentle-- sad.

"Everything is fine." She exhales explosively, realizing she's been holding her breath. This was a mistake.

"I really must be going." She'd picked that one up in the London finishing school Stacker shipped her to at sixteen, and she'd been mocked for weeks when she'd first joined the Forces-- chirping "I really must be going" to a mess hall full of mechanics and engineers who had bellowed deep, unwelcoming laughs because, at the time, her English was so very _English_.

Mako picks up the one bag she'd thought it prudent to bring here and walks toward the showers.

"I'm all right."

Speeds up.

"Don't worry. I'm okay."

Runs.

 

* * *

 

 Raleigh is in the shower with her. She didn't hear him following her-- their footsteps were still in sync-- and she didn't notice that each of her footfalls sounded heavier than usual until she was surrounded by swirling steam and heat and him, still clothed, staring her down in her nubby Forces towel and avoiding looking at her face.

He looks angry, but Mako knows he is hurt-- by her and for her-- because for her telling/ is not easy and he doesn't understand why she cannot trust him. He doesn't understand that this, for once, is not a matter of trust. They should not talk about this, and not for the reasons that Choi mumbles at his clipboard-- something about the still tender public consciousness and restoring the peacetime ethic. They should not talk ably this to preserve themselves because with them, the sorrow will rebound.

The towel feels too small-- she pulls it so that the gap of skin exposed is just over her hip, covering her belly and waits, listening to the jagged in-and-out of Raleigh's breathing reverberating off of the tiles. And when he says nothing and his eyes travel upward, past her toes with their cracking navy nail polish, to her ankles, to the scratches crossing her collarbones that will never quite heal, and then to her eyes something in her jumps, not with fear, but with something different. And when he finally mumbles "We're not okay." the front of his hair is wet and he's not looking into her eyes anymore, but is staring fixedly at her mouth. And that is when Mako decides that she will kiss him. Because she wants, very badly, to feels what it does-- to him, to her, to them both. And she misses, more than the firefights and the solid crack of a staff on the back of her opponent's neck, this feeling of utility-- that she is not useless, that she can help-- help him, help her, help them both.

"I can make you feel good." Raleigh says exactly as she's thinking it. "for a while at least." and Mako wants to brush her mouth with his to silence him but she stops herself-- lets him say out loud what she already knows to be true-- that this isn’t casual or an accident, but is the buildup of months of wanting. And he does say it, after furrowing his brows for what seems like an eternity, in a voice almost breaking.

“I could make you feel good forever.” So she kisses him. And for all of his hardness his lips are almost plushly soft and warm and insistent and she sighs against them without thinking when Raleigh tugs her lower lip into his mouth with his teeth and _sucks_.

"Hurry." She says as he tugs down the towel. 'Hurry' because, even at this early hour there are others in this gym and she hadn't thought it important to see if she was the only woman present. And Raleigh pulls back for a second, reverently smooths his hands down the length of of her body and kneels, catching her wrist before she can get a hand on the zipper of his trousers.

"No." he says, eyes level with her belly until they flick up-- burning-- and he’s pressing his forehead to the panes of her stomach and Mako can feel his eyelashes brushing against her hip. “This is better.” And he pushes at her knees until her legs are open and she feels her hip nearly pop just before he kisses her belly button and smiles. “Are you alright?” he asks, and Mako nods at him even as her eyes are watering because she is alright. Now.

His hands are large and warm on her ankles, and her hips are still sore from the strength regimen the two of them had been running through ten minutes prior. If she had an inkling before of what he’d been thinking about her, now, in this close proximity, she’s sure. So Mako breathes deliberately, in and out, and waits-- naked, legs shaking-- for him to do something, anything but kneel there with his eyebrows drawn together and his eyes shut tight.

Raleigh hooks one knee with his hand and then the other, before thickly saying "Jump." Almost dazedly she obeys, lifting her feet just off of the ground and before Mako knows it, his shoulders are beneath her knees-- the smooth cloth of his shirt digging into the sensitive skin there and Raleigh has buried his mouth into her-- pressing the flat of his tongue and she feels a scream bubbling out of her when her back presses to the warm wet of the tiles.

She knows that he is strong-- broad and taller even than the six foot staffs-- and she knows he is trying his best to be gentle, working to keep his grip on her hips light. But every so often he forgets, and his thumb sinks hard and deep into the curve of her hipbone, and she smooths her shaking fingers through his hair to comfort him-- murmurs “You’re perfect.” every time he stops, afraid he's hurt her.

But Mako doesn't want his strength, not now, she wants above all to hold him-- that is until Raliegh closes his lips just so and her whole world goes black and then bright. "I--" she says, almost incoherent "We--" stopping short because there is no difference here. Mako knows all the touches that will bring him pain but she does not know which ones will bring him pleasure and as he holds her above him-- his hips moving in irregular fits and starts as if he is taking someone-- she realizes that she wants, very badly, to learn.

She comes like a thunderclap, back arching painfully against the shower walls, and decides that she does not want to be worshipped. She wriggles herself partly free of his grasp, even though her legs are trembling, and he lowers her into his lap, head bowed, and Mako presses their foreheads together and twines her legs around his hips-- listens to the fits and starts of his breathing shimmer through the ar like music.

She decides they've denied themselves too long.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been lagging in my drafts for a while, so if you see the '@' symbol or an asterisk, those were things that I was going to change. I'm trying to practice writing more-- uh-- adult content and this is the first thing that I have posted broaching that subject. Also, there were once contextually important italics in this but, being as this iPad sucks ass and also being as I don't actually 100% own a computer yet, many of them are randomly gone. I'm bitter about it.
> 
> Unbetaed as always because I am Grandma Trashbag, Queen of Trashland. 
> 
> Empathetically bonded ships are *makes trembling fist* my lifeblood.


End file.
